“Go the F- to Sleep” — now in Jamaican patois

Perhaps you’ve been meaning to brush up on your Jamaican patois. Now’s the chance.

Today is the publication day of the latest translation of Adam Mansbach’s wickedly funny “Go the F- to Sleep,” the phenomenally successful bestseller that satirizes children’s bedtime board books. As the book jacket of the new edition explains, “Go de Rass to Sleep a one bedtime book fe mumma an puppa weh live inna de real worl, weh ‘puss-puss a sleep story’ an ‘ring ding song’ nuh always mek de pickney dem go a dem bed a nighttime.”

Mansbach’s book, whose charming illustrations by Ricardo Cortés and tender verse are offset by blunt, exasperated — and profane — admonishments, has sold more than 1 million copies and has been translated into more than 30 languages. Samuel L. Jackson and Werner Herzog are among the celebrities who have narrated the book. Its publisher is Akashic Books, a small Brooklyn house that is dedicated, in its words, “to publishing urban literary fiction and political nonfiction by authors who are either ignored by the mainstream, or who have no interest in working within the ever-consolidating ranks of the major corporate publishers.”

Adam Mansbach(Courtesy Akashic Books)

Here’s a sampling of Mansbach’s book, followed by the Jamaican patois translation by Kwame Dawes and Kellie Magnus (“rass,” used as an intensifier, derives from the English word of the same spelling, if you remove the r):

The eagles who soar through the sky are at rest
Like the creatures who crawl, run, and creep.
I know you’re not thirsty. That’s bulls-. Stop lying.
Lie the f- down, my darling, and sleep.******Even hawk weh fly high a res now
Like all de animal weh crawl, run, an creep.
Me know she yuh not tirsty a rass. Yuh too lie.
Lie de rass down, boonoonoonoos, an sleep.”

Another page, showing a drawing of a mouse sleeping in tall grass, reads: